And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.
And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons. The proper sacrifice was a lamb for a burnt offering, and a turtle-dove or young pigeon for a sin offering. But if a lamb could not be afforded, the mother was to bring two turtle-doves or two young pigeons; and if even this was beyond the family means, then a portion of fine flour, but without the usual fragrant accompaniments of oil and frankincense, because it represented a sin offering (Leviticus 12:6-8; Leviticus 5:7-11). From this we gather that our Lord's parents were in poor circumstances (2 Corinthians 8:9), and yet not in abject poverty; as they neither brought the lamb, nor availed themselves of the provision for the poorest, but presented the intermediate offering of "a pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons."
Remarks:
(1) We have here the first example of that double aspect of Christ's conformity to the law which characterized it throughout. Viewed simply in the light of obedience-an obedience in the highest sense voluntary, and faultlessly perfect-it is for men the model-obedience: He hath left us an example that we should follow His steps (1 Peter 2:21). But as He was made under the law only to redeem them that were under the law, His obedience was more than voluntary-it was strictly self-imposed obedience; and since it is by the obedience of this One that the many are made righteous (Romans 5:19), it had throughout, and in every part of it, a substitutionary character, which made it altogether unique. Since it was human obedience, it is our glorious exemplar: but as it is mediatorial obedience-strictly self-imposed and vicarious-a stranger doth not intermeddle with it. Thus, Christ is at once imitable and inimitable; and-paradoxical though it may sound-it is just the inimitable character of Christ's obedience that puts us in a condition to look at it in its imitable character, with the humble but confident assurance that we shall be able to follow His steps.
(2) That He who was rich should for ourselves have become, in the very circumstances of His birth, so poor that His parents should not have been able to afford a lamb for a burnt offering on His presentation in the temple-is singularly affecting; but that this poverty was not so abject as to awaken the emotion of pity-is one of those marks of Wisdom in the arrangement even of the comparatively trivial circumstances of His history, which bespeak the divine presence in it all, stamp the Evangelical Record with the seal of truth, and call forth devout admiration.